The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said the committee chairmen’s attempts to intervene in the investigation were “unlawful….”
“The letter’s requests are an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,” the district attorney’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, said. Prosecutors are typically barred from sharing information about an active investigation with third parties, and Ms. Dubeck noted in her letter that such information was “confidential under state law….”
Republicans…sent a letter demanding that Mr. Bragg provide them with communications, documents and testimony about his inquiry, which is expected to result in criminal charges against Mr. Trump.
It was once rare for elected officials to comment on independent inquiries for fear of seeming to influence them improperly. But Mr. Trump’s willingness to wade in has led his party to embrace his method: tarring investigations as political while simultaneously politicizing those investigations.
While in the White House, Mr. Trump slammed the inquiry led by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as politically biased, even as his attorney general, William P. Barr, challenged a federal case related to the hush-money payment that Mr. Bragg is now investigating.
Mr. Trump also trespassed on the Justice Department’s independence and fired both the F.B.I. director and his first attorney general because he viewed them as insufficiently loyal.
“History is watching as the House tries to break into law enforcement like it has never even tried before,” said Charles Tiefer, a former longtime House lawyer who is now a University of Baltimore law professor.
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